The Project Charter

The project charter serves as an agreement and as a communication tool for all of the project stakeholders. The project charter documents the projects MOV and describes the infrastructure needed to support the project. In addition, the project charter summarizes many of the details found in the project plan.

The purpose of the project charter is to:

Document the project’s MOV: Although the project’s MOV was included in the business case, it is important that the MOV be clearly defined and agreed upon before developing or executing the project plan. At this point, the MOV must be cast in stone. Once agreed upon, the MOV for a project should not change.

Define the project infrastructure: the project charter defines all of the people, resources, technology, methods, project management processes, and knowledge areas that are required to support the project. In short, the project charter will detail everything needed to carry out the project.

Summarize the details of the project plan: the project charter should summarize the scope, schedule, budget, quality objectives, deliverables, and milestones of the project.

Define the project’s governance structure: the project charter should not only identify the project sponsor, project manager, and project team, but should also specify when and how they will be involved throughout the project life cycle. In addition, the project charter should specify the lines of reporting, who will be responsible for specific decisions and how problems, issues, or risk should be escalated to an appropriate decision maker.

Show explicit commitment to the project: in addition to defining the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders, the project charter should detail the resources to be provided by the organization and specify clearly who will take ownership of the project’s product once the project is completed.

This section presents an overview of the typical areas that may go into a project charter:

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